Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Armed with a computer model in 1935, one could probably have written the exact same story on California drought as appears today in the Washington Post some 80 years ago, prompted by the very similar outlier temperatures of 1934 and 2014.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Firing Failed Employees Would ‘Harm’ Agency Says SEC Chief Schapiro

Over a year ago I asked a fairly simple question, why can’t we fire failed regulators? After all, lots of seemingly smart people had oversight of our financial markets, and regardless of whatever spin you might hear, our financial markets are, and have been, highly regulated. Sadly, “highly” is not the same as “well”.

Perhaps no failure was as avoidable as that of the Bernie Madoff scheme. After all outside parties basically put the case together and brought it to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Yet the SEC did nothing until it was far too late. Eventually the SEC’s human resources department and an outside law firm advised the agency on how to handle these regulatory failures. Their recommendation: fire the manager responsible. SEC Chair Mary Schapiro’s response? No, as such “would harm the agency’s work.” I’d think having incompetent employees would harm the agency’s work. But then we have yet to hear what happened to the many SEC employees that spent the crisis watching porn instead of doing their job.

This is just another example, in a long list, of why relying on the relatively weak incentives of government regulatory oversight is inferior to relying on the strong incentives contained in market participants having their own wealth on the line. But then for such incentives to be effective, we need to end bailouts and have real market discipline. Sadly we are currently stuck in the worst of both worlds: incompetent and unaccountable regulators coupled with a neutering of market discipline by these very same regulators.